Aerospace manufacturing company gets new mysterious competitor

Mar, 2017

It happens regularly enough: A bunch of people decide to form a company and go into business for themselves. Entrepreneurialism is the new, hot trend.

In this case, a bunch of people decided to leave their existing employer. An executive resigned for health reasons from a mid-sized aerospace manufacturing company. Eleven other employees quit in a 90-day period. The company has 200 employees, so 11 resignations means five per cent of its workforce.

Someone in the company realized something fishy was going on. A manager in the company called their lawyer and the lawyer called Cytelligence.

“We conducted forensics on the digital assets of the aerospace firm. An employee who had given notice to resign was still at his old position. We found communication among all 11 of those employees who had resigned and whose intent was to set up a competing company,” says Daniel Tobok.

The new competing company was not yet registered as an operating entity and the group of 11 employees tried to cover it up.

Nevertheless, in those early days, the new upstart was able to steal $1.2 million in business from their former employer because they knew what the costs were and they knew the suppliers that manufacturing was sub-contracted to.

The two parties settled out of court and the new competing company was shut down.

“Let’s be clear: these were not entrepreneurs. They were thieves,” says Tobok.